Xylarium

Xylarium

Xylarium is a collection of authenticated wood specimens that is well-curated and accessible to the scientific community. Xylarium in KFRI was established in 1979. KFRI's Xylarium is indexed in the IAWA Index Xylariorum 4.1 (2016), a directory of Institutional Wood Collections from around the World.

Xylarium is mainly intended to display the wood collections for scientific research, teaching, environmental education and other xylarium programmes. Wood collections are primarily of interest to wood anatomists, botanists, and foresters. Still, they hold specimens and information applicable to many different fields, such as antiques, furniture restoration, forensic timber identification, history, ecology, palaeontology, archaeology, conservation biology, dendroecology, climate change studies, etc.

As a service to the wood anatomical community, these collections will provide sectioning blocks for research projects, especially systematic wood anatomical studies, wood identification, etc. Since India is a net importer of industrial wood from abroad and most of the species are unfamiliar to the user agencies nor the commoner, proper diagnostics of the timber species signifies the importance of delirium in recent times, especially those CITES-listed species.

The xylarium currently has a collection of 715 specimens, representing 572 species from 320 genera. The samples represented Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Myanmar, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom.

The xylarium database has detailed records including family names, scientific names, accession numbers, collection dates, collector(s) names, xylarium numbers of voucher specimens, country of origin, altitude, latitude, longitude, habit, habitat, and various notes on collection or accession. Almost all wood specimens have corresponding voucher xylarium specimens deposited in the KFRI Xylarium with the same accession number unless they are foreign wood samples collected on an exchange basis.

The dimensions of the KFRI xylarium samples are standardized at 10x6x1 cm for small specimens and 16x10x2 cm for larger specimens. To enhance the diversity of wood samples, KFRI has a few xylarium samples (Indian species) available for mutual exchange, except for permanent slides.

Our scientists, Dr K.M. Bhat, Dr K.V. Bhat, Dr P.K. Thulasidas and Dr Sreekumar V.B., have contributed to the collection and enrichment of KFRI xylarium.

KFRI is committed to making this important collection more accessible to students, researchers, foresters, etc.. Now, the KFRI xylarium is available online at https://www.xylarium.in.

The digital version of KFRI Xylarium will help the global scientific community and the wood industry identify timber species based on their wood characteristics, and it will promote research, education, and conservation efforts related to plant biodiversity. In summary, this online database will play a crucial role in advancing scientific knowledge, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable resource management.